“I was finishing my studies last year at RMIT but I had to give up the studies because I couldn’t get Legal Aid…I had to do all the court stuff myself because I had no money and so I had to give up my studies. Because it is a full time job as well as looking after the children, running them around to everything and spending the other half of your week in court, writing up documents, writing up contravention to this blah blah. People go on about ‘Go get a job, go work, be financially independent’ and it’s like, if only you understood how I spend my week. I am not just hanging out at home with my feet up between 9 and 3.30. I am up at night so stressed, just so stressed financially. I have gone a million times to Women’s Legal Services but it’s like how many years spending hours and hours on a Thursday, trying to fight the next thing. I have just spent all these years just waiting and waiting and the anxiety.” (Sophie, 37, two girls aged 8 and 6, Melbourne).
4.1.3 Disputed parenting orders Disputed parenting orders are a common reason the women in the focus groups have been repeatedly engaged with the legal system. Disputes over parenting arrangements, including children’s residency arrangements and a range of other issues relating to the children’s lives, most often end up in the Family Courts for families with a history of family violence. As these women explain, the disputes can be over relatively minor matters, which they believe is a deliberate strategy by their former partners to drain their finances. Their frustration and loss of control is evident in the following quotes: “Any decision that needs to be made about the children, because there is a current parenting order it needs be a joint decision or have the orders changed, so I wanted to change my daughter’s school and I had to go back to the court to do that because he wouldn’t agree to change that. And then that is an added expense for me and it is actually a debt I have not yet repaid - about $3000. And the day before he was saying that he would agree for her to transfer but he wasn’t consenting yet so I had to go through on the court day and incur legal fees so it was all a bit of game play really…” (Jessie, 41, four children, Melbourne) “It’s really awful…even though we’ve got court orders, like we have court orders to pay [child support], he can just decide ‘I don’t want to pay it’. So I still have out of pocket expense because someone’s got to pay…The only way you can enforce it, because you can enforce it because it’s a court order, is back to court. And you can’t afford that. It’s hard to explain, but yeah the whole system…” (Karen, 44, nurse, five children aged 3 to 16, Melbourne) The women in the focus groups report other consequences of disputed or breached parenting orders that affected not only their own health but also their children's. It is significant that the overwhelming majority of women with dependent children expressed the view that they wanted their children to have an ongoing relationship with their father, notwithstanding the abuse the women continued to experience. Louisa graphically describes the impact of constant anxiety about legal costs and the fear of losing her children if she doesn’t comply with the proceedings repeatedly initiated by her former partner. “…but this is the fear, this is the torment, the money. It makes you feel like you are going mad even though you know you are sane. Every day is a living nightmare, you lie in bed and you wonder, ‘how am I going to pay that?’ It is just terrible. All I do is I have a table and it has child support, court, medical [on it] and every night you come home from school, you do all the readers and then you look and you go ‘I am exhausted’. And I think ‘which one am I going to do tonight?’ I have to write to that person, I have a court order, if I don’t do it they will take my children. (Louisa, 45, three children aged 9, 7 and 4, Melbourne) Disputes around their children’s health needs, including their former partner’s refusal to provide court ordered private health insurance cover, were a common occurrence reported by several participants. Sophie describes how her former partner’s abusive refusal to comply with parenting orders affects the most basic aspects of her daughters’ lives:
SECTION FOUR: THE SYSTEMIC CONTINUATION OF FINANCIAL ABUSE POST-SEPARATION
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